Friday, May 07, 2004

Horrific abuses similar to those revealed in Iraq regularly occur in US prisons with little national attention or public outrage, human rights activists have said.

"We certainly see many of the same kinds of things here in the United States, including sexual assaults and the abuse of prisoners, against both men and women," said Kara Gotsch of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"This office has been involved in cases in which prisoners have been raped by guards and humiliated but we don't talk about it much in America and we certainly don't hear the president expressing outrage."

President George Bush has said he was disgusted by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. Yet there were many cases of abuse in Texas when he was governor from 1995 to 2000.

In September 1996 guards at the Brazoria County jail staged a drug raid on inmates that was videotaped for training purposes. The tape showed several inmates forced to strip and lie on the ground.

Guards prodded prisoners with stun guns and forced them to crawl along the ground. Then they dragged injured inmates face down back to their cells.

In 1999 federal judge William Wayne Justice wrote of the situation in Texas state prisons: "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions."

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The people of Iraq ?must understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know,? Bush told Al-Hurra. -- from Wednesday

The only America Bush knows is those idiots yelling "Four more years!" at his bribe-collection appearances. He didn't know what was going on in Texas, he doesn't know what's going on in Iraq. He's an idiot.